Diana Sierra believes in opportunity. Sierra, a student in the Master of Science in Sustainability Management program, believes that having access to opportunities can make a big difference in someone’s life. Sierra is an industrial designer with more than seven years of experience and is a summer intern working with the Millennium Villages Project in Ruhiira, Uganda.

Seeing the experience as an opportunity to help empower people in a severely economically depressed part of the world, Sierra began working on two projects. Her first project was to analyze the value chain of a coffee cooperative and her second was to work with a women’s arts and crafts cooperative to market their products. Sierra felt that she would be particularly suited to help because she grew up on her father’s coffee farm in Santuario, Colombia.